 Today what I want to talk to you about is what does it mean to vote? We're going to be getting at some very fundamental ideas and looking at the traditional way that we vote, issues that may be involved with that, and looking at alternatives, specifically looking at approval voting. So let's get off right to the beginning. What does it mean to vote? Well, when you vote it involves several elements. The first element is the expression. You need to offer some kind of information on your ballot in order for that to be calculated for a result. So typically what we see as far as expression is we're told to choose just one person. So that's just one way to do that. And really that's the least amount of information that you can offer. Other ways include ranking candidates or ideas or options, giving a thumbs up, thumbs down or choosing as many options as you want. Another option is scoring candidates, so giving them each candidate a value. So these are just different ways that you're offering your opinion, you're expressing your support for all the different options that are available. So that's one element of voting. Another element of voting is the calculation. You have to do something with that information in order to get to the result. So typically what we see is just summing up selections for different choices. So say you're limited to choosing just one candidate. Well typically you're just summing up those selections for those candidates. Other voting methods, they take that information typically among ranking methods and they apply an algorithm in order to determine the winner. So there are different procedures that this calculation can go through in order to determine the result. And finally you have the results within the voting method. So you have some kind of representation of support for all the candidates that are involved. We have a winner, we have a set of losers, and all of the candidates that were present get some kind of measure of how much they were supported by the electorate. So how are we voting? Like how do we do this typically? Are we doing this just the same old way that we always have without really thinking about it? Or have we been experimenting more? Well typically we really don't think about this. We think about voting, we think about just choosing one person. So let's talk about the typical way that we go about doing this. So here's the same old way. What we see is we see a selection in front of us, here's the important point. Choosing one. This is typically what we see. And what do we call this? We call this plurality voting. So let's talk a little bit about the way of plurality. Parality with the expression element that we talked about before, when you're giving information, the information that plurality asks of you is to choose just one candidate. This is a limiting instruction to choose just one. Remember this is the least amount of information that you can offer. And secondly, it adds up those selections. So it looks at all the candidates, how many voters chose those candidates, and it adds those up in order to determine the result. So this is typically what we used to. Parality is so pervasive that this actually tends to be what people think of when they think of voting without recognizing that it's just one way to go about voting or conducting an election. When we think about elections, obviously, we're not talking about just in government. Elections take place in a number of different contexts, including awards, contests, and also within clubs and boards. But you see a lot of miscellaneous ways, too. For instance, in Atlanta with their zoo, they had two panda bears coming in and they wanted to name them. So they had the public vote among the names that they made available. But even here, even with the Atlanta Zoo, they limited their voters to choosing just one set of names among all of the choices. What's wrong with this picture of Parality voting? We've been doing this a long time. We don't really think about it. So is this okay? I mean, have we been doing this? Is this good enough? Is this something that has been working for us? Let's look a little bit closer at this picture. So I want you to look at two ways in particular that Parality voting raises issues. The first way is with something that we call vote splitting. So imagine you're with a group of friends and you're trying to choose the best actor. And you have four actors that are just like Michael Keaton. And the other alternative is Paulie Shore. Now here, if you have, say, 79% of the voters here are supportive of Michael Keaton, we're going to run into an issue because there are four Michael Keaton's that are hard to distinguish. And say with Paulie Shore, say Paulie Shore, now you may not be the best actor in the world, but he has a little bit of support. So we'll put him at 21% support. Here if we're using Parality voting, the vote will split four ways among Michael Keaton's. And so as a result, you have the support for Michael Keaton divided by four. So Michael Keaton needs to have more than four times as much support as Paulie Shore, even if the overall platform for Michael Keaton has 79% support. So vote splitting is a very real issue. They don't, candidates or choices don't have to be identical, but if they're similar in some way, then you're going to have a vote splitting issue that doesn't represent the platform for that idea. The other issue that Parality raises is something called betraying one's favorite. With Parality, you only get one vote. And because you only get one vote, you need to make it count if you want to have a say in the outcome of the election. So if you have a candidate that you really like, and it doesn't seem like that choice is going to be able to go anywhere, it's not that popular, then you don't want to throw away your vote by choosing that candidate. That's the best choice you've ever seen. You could be in love with that choice. But if you want to have a say in how the election turns out, you're going to need to look among the front runners, among the choices that are likely to be able to have a chance at winning. And so typically what we see in Parality elections, not just with people, in elections take place in a number of contexts. And so if there's an idea that's there that you really like, you may not be able to choose that. And in addition, that comes up in the results. So other choices that may not be as well known. They're sort of like raising in popularity. Those are going to get a dearth of support compared to their actual support, because Parality just doesn't give voters the opportunity to look at them. So we see some of the issues with Parality voting. So what's the fix here? What do we do about this? I would suggest looking right at the directions. With Parality voting, the directions tell us to choose just one candidate. Again, this is a limiting instruction. So we need to take that and allow voters to be able to be more expressive with their vote. And so we need to take that select one, get rid of it, and allow voters a broader way to express themselves. So this alternative, we would say to a voter, you can select one candidate or more. So it's not limiting anymore for a voter to choose just one person. And this has a name. We call this Approval Voting. With Approval Voting, you can choose as many candidates as you want. The ballot itself looks a lot like the traditional Paralty vote for one ballot that we're used to. We see that the choices in the box are the same. The layout is the same. The difference in Approval Voting is that you can choose as many as you want. And these are equal. So traditionally in a Paralty election, you would total up all the selections for the different options. With Approval Voting, you're doing the exact same thing. Only now if a voter chooses more than one option, we're actually counting those. On the Paralty, had a voter chosen more than one option, we would throw that ballot away. So we're just saying, count all of the votes. Don't throw ballots away when people choose more than one candidate. And it counts them all equally. And Approval Voting, same thing as what we're used to. We're simply adding up all the selections for candidates. We're not doing anything complicated here. Everything is the same, except we're saying, you know what? We're not going to limit you. We're going to let you choose as many options as you want. And we're going to count all of them. That's all we're doing. So how does this address the problems that we mentioned earlier with Paralty Voting? So let's look first at our Michael Keaton issue versus Paulie Shor. Well, here we are back again. We have four Michael Keatons and a Paulie Shor. We see a Michael Keaton platform. And 79% of the support goes for Michael Keaton versus Paulie Shor's 21%. But now we're using Approval Voting. We're using Approval Voting, and we see that all the Michael Keatons are virtually identical. Well, what do we do? Well, we don't want to split our vote anymore. So as a voter, we just choose every single one. If they're all the same to you, just choose them all. You won't have any more vote splitting among the Michael Keatons. And you have an honest reflection of the support there for Michael Keatons. So here, you'd have 79% of the support for Michael Keatons. And Paulie Shor is still getting his 21%. But you'd have an accurate reflection. And Michael Keatons wouldn't have that same issue with the vote splitting. The other issue that Approval Voting does a good job addressing is betraying one's favorite. Under Approval Voting, you can always choose your honest favorite, no matter what. And the reason you can do that is because if you have a candidate that you really like, you can go ahead and vote for them. But if you want to have a say in the election, as far as the outcome goes, well, you can also look among the front runners and do a process similar to what you did on the plurality. You look at the front runner that's acceptable to you, you choose that one. And now you have the chance of affecting the outcome. And then you look at everyone else that you also like. And then you can choose them as well. The important thing here about choosing one's favorite and not having to worry about betraying your favorite is that all of the alternative choices, even if they didn't win, they get a much more accurate reflection of support. And that's important for your electorate to have to appreciate the outcome. If they see that their options aren't getting an accurate reflection, that's going to be upsetting to them. And the same thing for the candidates. Whether people that put their ideas in the ring or people that put themselves in the ring, they want an accurate reflection of support for themselves, even if they didn't win. And that's important for discussion and it's important for new ideas to be able to have a shot at growing. This simply is not possible under Ferrari Voting. And now we have a video here to demonstrate approval voting. So here we go. What is approval voting? Simply put, it's a better way to run an election. Let's take a trip to Plantsville. It's election time and Mayor Blueberry is campaigning hard for a second term in office. She won the last election with 65% against her opponent, Mr. Squash, and she still enjoys strong support. Once again, Mr. Squash is quick to challenge Ms. Blueberry. But this time, they're joined by a third challenger, Mr. Peach, who shares similar views with Mayor Blueberry. Mr. Peach sweet talks almost half of Blueberry's supporters into switching their vote to him, while Mr. Squash holds the same 35% he had last time. The votes are counted. And what's this? Mr. Squash wins? Blueberry and Peach have split the fruit vote. How did this happen? Peach's supporters also liked Blueberry, but couldn't say so on their ballots. A simple solution is to change the ballot from vote for one to vote for one or more, allowing everyone to state all the candidates they support. This is called approval voting. With approval voting, the election would have gone quite differently. Peach's supporters no longer fear that a vote for Peach will help elect Squash. Instead, they show their sincere support for Peach and also Blueberry. They want to prevent Mr. Squash from winning, and they do. And approval voting accurately reflects Peach's support. Mayor Blueberry wins the election. Democracy is restored. Approval voting is more than just a smart idea in plan spell. It's a smart idea anywhere you vote. Approval voting is used by organizations across the globe, and for good reason. It's democratic because the candidate with the most support wins. It removes the spoiler effect. Even losing candidates get an accurate reflection of support. And voting your favorite never hurts you. Start the conversation on approval voting and share this video. Then join the Center for Election Science at electology.org. Better voting starts with you. Ask yourself the question. How would you like to run your election? Do you want to do things the same old way? Or would you like to try something new? Thank you.